Tag: Adobe

Adobe is out to change the very face of photography with a new technology that computes an image instead of simply displaying it. This new technology uses plenoptic lenses to capture a series of images over certain depth range. The result? You may have guessed by now that the images thus generated can be focused (not just zoomed) in and out after being captured.

The breakthrough was presented at a keynote speech at the Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference. The technology is more of a proof of concept that ready for mass production but hey, it works! This can also make it possible for the camera to capture 3-D images.

The concept has been proven and what remains is creating software for the cameras to do this magic. There is no word on when that will happen though, the concept is already enthralling to photographers.

Adobe has just updated the minimum requirement for Flash 10.1 on Android handsets and the change is going to affect a lot of Droid owners out there. Adobe and Motorola had initially stated that Flash 10.1 will be supported on the Droid. However, the updated requirements from Adobe state that all mobile phones must be running an ARM Cortex A8 processor running at 800 MHz or above. This means that the original Droid or the Milestone won’t support Flash 10.1 since the Cortex A8 processor inside the handset runs at 550 MHz.

Nevertheless, Motorola had under clocked the A8 processor inside this handset and if the company wants they can make the processor run at 800 MHz, which will make the handset Flash 10.1 compatible. Heck! Even the stock kernel on the Motorola Droid allows overclocking up to 800 MHz (Rooted Users only!). There are also many custom kernels available for the Droid which overclocks the processor of the device to 1.1 GHz.

I seriously hope Motorola and/or Adobe do something about it since the Droid/Milestone is one of the most popular Android handset out there. Removing the Droid from the Flash 10.1 compatibility list will seriously not go down well with the Droid owners.

One of the major benefits of Android 2.2 is that it brings full flash to Android via Flash Player 10.1. However, not many phones have got their fair share of Froyo and Flash love except for the Google Nexus One. The Motorola Droid has already got its Froyo update, but the Flash update for the phone still has not been released. The Flash 10.1 update for the Droid was expected to be rolled out from August 18, but sadly it did not happen.

There are many leaked Flash 10.1 .apk’s floating around on the Internet which Droid owners can install. However, these Flash builds are not optimized for the Droid and thus result in a choppy experience. Nevertheless, users who want smooth and trouble free Flash experience on their Droid should install the latest version of CyanogenMod 6 a.k.a CM6 RC3. After installing the latest RC of CM6, users should search the market for the Flash player and install it.

Apparently, this Flash 10.1 player provides a much better flash experience on your Droid than the other leaked .apk’s do.

Few days ago, the Android 2.2 update for Motorola Droid was rolled out by Verizon. The users complained that Adobe Flash 10.1 and few other stuffs were missing. Now, Verizon will be releasing another update which will enable Droid users to download and install Adobe Flash 10.1 from Android marketplace. Adobe Flash 10.1 will be available by late summer.

The other features which will come with the update are new security options like Remote device wipe and lock, wipe out data after certain number of password attempts. The browser will be enhanced for quicker loading of heavy JavaScript pages.

Earlier, Verizon said that Wi-Fi tethering will not be featuring in Droid because the hardware doesn’t support it. Unfortunately, even though Android 2.2 supports this feature it will remain absent on Motorola Droid (by official means). Engadget reported that the hardware incapability is reported by Verizon not Motorola.

Motorola Droid, which was once doubtful to even get Android 2.2 update is slowly getting all the fun like the other high-end Android devices.

It’s bad enough that we get hit with tons of third party browser cookies that can track our surfing habits. Now we have to worry about Flash cookies and even worse, Zombie cookies. So what are these new cookies?

Almost every computer that accesses the web, now has Adobe Flash installed on it. In case you didn’t know, the Flash program stores it’s own cookies that your web browser has absolutely no control over. Are these Flash cookies bad for us? Yes, they can store all kinds of private information that can be passed to almost any website that uses them. A typical browser cookie is only 4k in size, while a Flash cookie can be up to 100k. That’s more room for information that you may not want to share.

In addition to being more difficult to control, the Flash cookies are now also resurrecting browser cookies that you may have intentionally blocked or removed. These resurrected cookies are known as Zombie cookies. I found out about this from Woody at Windows Secrets newsletter. Once I found out, I decided to look around for ways to get some control over these rogue Flash cookies. Here’s what I’ve found so far.

Adobe Flash has privacy settings that you can adjust by going to their website.

I’ll be honest with you – I really don’t understand many of these settings, but I have used them a few times. I just don’t know how much good it’s done me. Here are some sample screen shots of my settings.

There are settings in each of the 8 tabs there. All I can recommend is that you review the settings and be sure that most of them ask your permission for unusual requests such as webcam access.

Another way to control and remove Flash cookies is to use this freeware program I’ve found called FlashCookiesView.

This program is available as a zip file and is completely portable. Just unpack it into a folder and execute the program when you need it. FlashCookiesView allows you to see all of the Flash cookies, view the contents of the cookies, and to delete any of them you wish.

Adobe Acrobat Reader and Microsoft Internet explorer have become a top favorite with hackers. Internet Explorer with its innumerable vulnerabilities forms an excellent learning ground for crackers. Another hot favorite with them is Adobe Reader.

Both Adobe and its users are fed up by continuous release of updates and follow up hack attempts in spite of these updates. In a recent announcement, Adobe has announced that it will release its next Reader software as a sandboxed application.

Sandboxing prevents an application from accessing the underlying data and creates a virtual environment for the application to run. This keeps the processes within the application free from each other and prevents them from accessing data from the computer.

Brad Arkin, Adobe’s director of security and privacy says,

With sandboxing, anyone who encounters a malicious PDF will find that a successful exploit is kept within the sandbox.

The sandboxing approach however, cannot ensure complete safety, as the sandbox itself has to be powerful enough. However, it will need two levels of breach before any actual data is compromised.

Adobe has released a demo application called FlashTime which enables video chat on Android devices. The app was built using Adobe Air 2.5 for the Android platform and uses your smartphone’s camera to enable video chat with other users.

They seem to be making a point to iPhone developers (Apple doesn’t allow Flash on the iOS platform) that it’s very easy to build powerful applications using Flash and then port them over to any supported platform (like Android) using Adobe AIR. This particular FlashTime demo app took just 3 days to build.

Mark Doherty, Flash Platform Evangelist, Mobile and Devices, Adobe, said on his blog, “This is not an Adobe product, but simply a feature demo that took 3 days. Any one can build P2P applications with Flash and AIR.”

Adobe had unveiled Flash and AIR support for Android, back at MWC, Barcelona in February.

A new app called Frash which can run on jailbroken iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad does better than the earlier apps and allows users to access and view Flash content on their iDevices. The Frash app is available for downloads as a .deb file and can be installed on a Jailbroken iPad through Cydia.

According to Engadget, you cannot view video playback using the app currently, however, they were able to play games and view other simple Flash content. Though the missing video playback might be an issue, it is definitely promising that iPad users can at-least play games right now.

Hopefully the developer Comex will come up with an update for the app which will also allow users to view Flash videos. Excited to install the Frash app on the iPad and play games? Visit this Engadget post which has full instructions. You can also watch a video of the Frash app in action below on an iPad.

Soon after this update was released, the modders over at XDA forums got back to work and started finding ways to root the EVO 4G. Thankfully, an anonymous modder has been able to find a hack to root the EVO 4G again. This new rooting method uses vulnerability present in Adobe’s Flash Lite Config to do its job.

The method is a bit complex, so only experienced users should try this. Here is the link to the thread with full instructions.

This Tuesday, Adobe released a slew of updates to fix security holes numbered at 17, all of them critical. One of these was used widely to take control of computers using social engineering and PDF documents. The same vulnerability was present in Flash and was fixed on 10th of June.

This clearly indicates that Adobe uses reusable code across multiple products and given the kind of security vulnerabilities it carries, a hole in one of the Adobe software can easily be present in others as well. Thankfully, hackers Didier Stevens and a researcher at NitroSecurity found these security holes in two separate attempts as a proof-of-concept hack.

Adobe made a statement on this saying,

We added functionality to block any attempts to launch an executable or other harmful objects by default. We also altered the way the existing warning dialog works to thwart the known social engineering attacks.

To counter its vulnerable codes and to improve the security of users, Adobe rolled out a new update system in April this year. It seems to be effective but we all know that patchwork is not the best practice in software development. Adobe should try making its products more secure at the core.